Recommendations of Python REST web services framework

Question

Is there a list somewhere of recommendations of different Python-based REST frameworks for use on the serverside to write your own RESTful APIs  Preferably with pros and cons   Please feel free to add recommendations here

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See Python Web Frameworks wiki   You probably do not need the full stack frameworks  but the remaining list is still quite long

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We re using Django for RESTful web services   Note that -- out of the box -- Django did not have fine-grained enough authentication for our needs   We used the Django-REST interface  which helped a lot    We ve since rolled our own because we d made so many extensions that it had become a maintenance nightmare    We have two kinds of URL s   html  URL s which implement the human-oriented HTML pages  and  json  URL s which implement the web-services oriented processing   Our view functions often look like this   def someUsefulThing  request  object id          do some processing     return   a dictionary with results    def htmlView  request  object id        d   someUsefulThing  request  object id       render to response   template html   d         def jsonView  request  object id        d   someUsefulThing  request  object id       data   serializers serialize   json   d  object    fields EXPOSED FIELDS       response   HttpResponse  data  status 200  content type  application json        response  Location    reverse   some path to this view   kwargs             return response   The point being that the useful functionality is factored out of the two presentations   The JSON presentation is usually just one object that was requested   The HTML presentation often includes all kinds of navigation aids and other contextual clues that help people be productive   The jsonView functions are all very similar  which can be a bit annoying   But it s Python  so make them part of a callable class or write decorators if it helps

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Something to be careful about when designing a RESTful API is the conflation of GET and POST  as if they were the same thing  It s easy to make this mistake with Django s function-based views and CherryPy s default dispatcher  although both frameworks now provide a way around this problem  class-based views and MethodDispatcher  respectively    HTTP-verbs are very important in REST  and unless you re very careful about this  you ll end up falling into a REST anti-pattern   Some frameworks that get it right are web py  Flask and Bottle  When combined with the mimerender library  full disclosure  I wrote it   they allow you to write nice RESTful webservices   import web import json from mimerender import mimerender  render xml   lambda message    lt message gt  s lt  message gt   message render json   lambda   args  json dumps args  render html   lambda message    lt html gt  lt body gt  s lt  body gt  lt  html gt   message render txt   lambda message  message  urls                   greet    app   web application urls  globals     class greet       mimerender          default    html           html   render html          xml    render xml          json   render json          txt    render txt           def GET self  name           if not name               name    world          return   message    Hello      name         if   name         main         app run     The service s logic is implemented only once  and the correct representation selection  Accept header    dispatch to the proper render function  or template  is done in a tidy  transparent way     curl localhost 8080 x  lt html gt  lt body gt Hello  x  lt  body gt  lt  html gt     curl -H  Accept  application html  localhost 8080 x  lt html gt  lt body gt Hello  x  lt  body gt  lt  html gt     curl -H  Accept  application xml  localhost 8080 x  lt message gt Hello  x  lt  message gt     curl -H  Accept  application json  localhost 8080 x   message   Hello  x       curl -H  Accept  text plain  localhost 8080 x Hello  x    Update  April 2012   added information about Django s class-based views  CherryPy s MethodDispatcher and Flask and Bottle frameworks  Neither existed back when the question was asked

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Piston is very flexible framework for wirting RESTful APIs for Django applications

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web2py includes support for easily building RESTful API s  described here and here  video   In particular  look at parse as rest  which lets you define URL patterns that map request args to database queries  and smart query  which enables you to pass arbitrary natural language queries in the URL

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We are working on a framework for strict REST services  check out http   prestans googlecode com   Its in early Alpha at the moment  we are testing against mod wsgi and Google s AppEngine   Looking for testers and feedback  Thanks

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I don t see any reason to use Django just to expose a REST api  there are lighter and more flexible solutions  Django carries a lot of other things to the table  that are not always needed  For sure not needed if you only want to expose some code as a REST service    My personal experience  fwiw  is that once you have a one-size-fits-all framework  you ll start to use its ORM  its plugins  etc  just because it s easy  and in no time you end up having a dependency that is very hard to get rid of   Choosing a web framework is a tough decision  and I would avoid picking a full stack solution just to expose a REST api    Now  if you really need want to use Django  then Piston is a nice REST framework for django apps   That being said  CherryPy looks really nice too  but seems more RPC than REST   Looking at the samples  I never used it   probably web py is the best and cleanest if you only need REST

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Surprised no one mentioned flask   from flask import Flask app   Flask   name      app route      def hello        return  Hello World    if   name         main         app run

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I you are using Django then you can consider django-tastypie as an alternative to django-piston  It is easier to tune to non-ORM data sources than piston  and has great documentation

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I strongly recommend TurboGears or Bottle   TurboGears    less verbose than django more flexible  less HTML-oriented  but  less famous   Bottle    very fast very easy to learn but  minimalistic and not mature

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Here is a discussion in CherryPy docs on REST  http   docs cherrypy org dev progguide REST html  In particular it mentions a built in CherryPy dispatcher called MethodDispatcher  which invokes methods based on their HTTP-verb identifiers  GET  POST  etc

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I really like CherryPy   Here s an example of a restful web service   import cherrypy from cherrypy import expose  class Converter       expose     def index self           return  Hello World         expose     def fahr to celc self  degrees           temp    float degrees  - 32    5   9         return    01f    temp       expose     def celc to fahr self  degrees           temp   float degrees    9   5   32         return    01f    temp  cherrypy quickstart Converter      This emphasizes what I really like about CherryPy  this is a completely working example that s very understandable even to someone who doesn t know the framework   If you run this code  then you can immediately see the results in your web browser  e g  visiting http   localhost 8080 celc to fahr degrees 50 will display 122 0 in your web browser

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Take a look at   Itty  blog post  Bottle web py juno

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I am not an expert on the python world but I have been using django which is an excellent web framework and can be used to create a restful framework

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Seems all kinds of python web frameworks can implement RESTful interfaces now   For Django  besides tastypie and piston  django-rest-framework is a promising one worth to mention  I ve already migrated one of my project on it smoothly      Django REST framework is a lightweight REST framework for Django  that   aims to make it easy to build well-connected  self-describing RESTful   Web APIs    Quick example   from django conf urls defaults import patterns  url from djangorestframework resources import ModelResource from djangorestframework views import ListOrCreateModelView  InstanceModelView from myapp models import MyModel  class MyResource ModelResource       model   MyModel  urlpatterns   patterns         url r      ListOrCreateModelView as view resource MyResource        url r    P lt pk gt            InstanceModelView as view resource MyResource        Take the example from official site  all above codes provide api  self explained document like soap based webservice  and even sandbox to test a bit  Very convenience   Links  http   django-rest-framework org

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In 2010  the Pylons and repoze bfg communities  joined forces  to create Pyramid  a web framework based most heavily on repoze bfg  It retains the philosophies of its parent frameworks  and can be used for RESTful services   It s worth a look

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